With so much competition in the property management industry, traditional marketing strategies no longer work. Property managers need to go beyond starting a website, using email marketing, being on social media, and launching paid ad campaigns to find new clients.
If you're struggling to bring in leads, these are our best creative marketing ideas for property management businesses, with more information on each below.
- Launch a referral program: Best for beginner property investors
- Partner with real estate investment platforms: Best for scaling up property management lead generation
- Tap into your customer base: Best for more experienced property managers
- Reach out to other property managers: Best for property managers in niche markets
- Organize rental property investment webinars: Best for property managers with extensive knowledge in the field
- Take advantage of TikTok: Best for property managers skilled at social media
- Engage on Reddit: Best for property managers with strong industry expertise
- Reach out to real estate investing content creators: Best for national outreach
- Work with investment property influencers: Best for property managers with ample marketing budgets
- Offer free consultations: Best for property managers with free time
1. Launch a Referral Program: Best for Beginner Property Managers
One of the best marketing ideas for new property managers is to start a referral program. This entails connecting with other real estate professionals in your area and offering them a reward in exchange for sending leads to you. The reward can be anything from paying a small commission or giving them a gift card, all the way to sending them referrals as well.
Some of the main benefits of this strategy are that it requires zero startup costs and that you pay a commission based on results. Moreover, professionals such as investor-friendly real estate agents, lenders, interior designers, and furnishing companies have access to hundreds of property investors who might be looking for property management services. Together, these advantages make launching a referral program a particularly good option for property management businesses that are just starting out and have no current customers and only limited marketing budgets.
To succeed with this marketing idea, it's important to reach out to as many potential partners as possible. Pay a visit to all relevant local businesses and inquire about their interest in working together. Highlight exactly how they will benefit from this partnership, whether through direct payments for their services, access to your contacts, or any other way.
2. Partner with Real Estate Investment Platforms: Best for Scaling Up Property Management Lead Generation
Another creative way to boost your property management lead generation efforts is to connect with different online platforms that support buyers in their investment journey. These could be online property marketplaces such as Zilow and Roofstock, foreclosure websites like Auction.com and Foreclosure.com, and data analytics platforms such as Summer and Mashvisor. With hundreds of websites offering various solutions for rental property investors, the sky's the limit with regards to whom you partner with.
This creative marketing idea is very similar to having a referral program, but it focuses exclusively on online platforms rather than local real estate businesses. Once again, you can offer a commission or another monetary reward to partners who send you qualified leads to grow your operations.
The main advantage of this strategy is that you can get virtually unlimited access to property owners from the entire U.S. market. Tech-based platforms have the capacity to help hundreds of new investors buy properties each and every month, and with the help of automation, they can easily send them your way to offer your property management services.
3. Tap Into Your Customer Base: Best for More Experienced Property Managers
If you already have an established customer base of investors whose properties you've been successfully managing for years, you can use them in your creative marketing efforts. This strategy is as easy to implement as it gets. Simply tell the owners that you work with that you are looking for new properties to add to your portfolio as you're growing your team and would appreciate their help in mentioning your name to fellow hosts and investors in need of professional property management services. As an additional motivation, you can offer them a small discount on the monthly fees that they pay for every new customer they bring to your business.
This idea is powerful not only because it doesn't require an expensive marketing budget but also because of its strong potential. After all, your current customers are the best evidence of the high-quality services that you provide and the results that you bring to rental property owners. So, a recommendation from them can achieve much more than other unnecessarily complicated and costly marketing efforts.
However, for this strategy to work, you need to already have a few customers that will be happy to vouch for your work. That's why it works best for property managers with some experience.
4. Reach Out to Other Property Managers: Best for Property Managers in Niche Markets
Another easy-to-implement marketing idea that very few property management companies try out is to collaborate with other property managers. This approach sounds counterintuitive because it doesn't make sense to cooperate with direct competitors, and that's why it's not a popular strategy.
However, the key is to partner with other property managers who are not direct competitors to your business. For instance, if you specialize in long term rental property management services, you can connect with the best Airbnb management companies in your area. Alternatively, you can reach out to short term rental property managers that operate outside your market or niche. That's what makes this a good idea for rental property managers who specialize in niche geographical areas that are not covered by most companies.
Once you have a bit of interest, you can ask them to join your referral program where you pay them a fee or a commission for every lead or customer they bring to you. Or you can work on an exchange basis where you also send them referrals that are a good fit for their specialization and market coverage.
5. Organize Rental Property Investment Webinars: Best for Property Managers with Extensive Knowledge in the Field
Next on our list of creative marketing ideas for property management professionals is to launch your own series of webinars targeting rental property investors. You can cover a wide range of topics, like how to identify the top markets for investing, how to find Airbnb properties for sale, and how to manage properties in the most efficient way. This means that you need to have expertise in a few different areas that interest potential customers, whether current owners or beginner investors who are about to purchase their first property.
If you decide to opt for this strategy, you must market your webinars too. This can be done through your website, on your social media accounts, via email marketing, and by word-of-mouth marketing.
For each webinar, choose a topic that's truly relevant to the needs of investors and that you are intimately familiar with. During the webinar, show your expertise in the field of property management through real-life examples from your experience and also highlight the benefits of professional rental property management services, like those that you offer. Don't forget to include a call-to-action at the end of each webinar where you invite property owners to get in touch with any questions or concerns about their property that they might have.
6. Take Advantage of TikTok: Best for Property Managers Skilled at Social Media
While TikTok comes with its pros and cons, no one can deny its power to attract different types of viewers and grab their attention. Because of the ongoing talks about banning the platform in the U.S. market, most property managers refrain from using it in their digital marketing strategies. But savvy professionals can benefit from the many advantages that TikTok offers for creative marketing as long as it's available.
To begin with, creating and publishing TikTok videos requires very little time, effort, and budget compared to YouTube videos and even Instagram videos. Every property manager with a smartphone and some social media experience can shoot a video where they discuss a matter of interest to real estate investors and post it on TikTok. One particularly powerful idea is to do very short tours of the properties that you manage and show how amazing they look (after you've gotten permission from their owners, of course). You can also highlight the results you've been able to drive for existing customers.
If you have a budget, you can also run TikTok ads to support your organic social media marketing efforts. This can help you reach your target audience and get their attention.
7. Engage on Reddit: Best for Property Managers with Strong Industry Expertise
Another out-of-the-box marketing idea that many property managers fail to try out is engaging with real estate investors on Reddit. This platform functions as an online forum for all types of people, including property investors, rental owners, and Airbnb hosts.
If you have a deep understanding of the real estate investing business and some time on your hands, you can join relevant communities, keep an eye on discussions, and share insights on important topics. To succeed with this strategy, remember that you have to offer truly helpful and useful advice and avoid blatantly marketing yourself and your business. Instead, you have to slowly grow your presence and your authority to spark the interest of property investors and owners.
Once again, this approach requires little investment (other than your time commitment) and is rarely used by competitors, which makes it a creative, yet effective strategy.
8. Reach Out to Real Estate Investing Content Creators: Best for National Outreach
In addition to agents, brokers, lenders, investors, and other property managers, you can also benefit from collaborating with marketers and industry experts who create different types of content related to real estate investment and property management. These can be blog writers, journalists, or video creators.
You should reach out to them to explore mutually beneficial ways to work together. For example, you can provide them with expert advice and actionable tips to include in their content to make it unique and more authoritative compared to what other websites or YouTube channels are publishing. In exchange, they can cite you as an industry expert when quoting your insights as well as mention you in articles that talk about the best property managers in their market or other related topics.
The main advantage of this creative marketing idea is that you can gain exposure to thousands of rental property investors if you cooperate with content creators that work for major websites or YouTube channels. Moreover, this strategy doesn't require a big marketing budget, but it definitely needs solid commitment on your behalf to find the right content creators, connect with them, and follow up on a regular basis.
9. Work with Investment Property Influencers: Best for Property Managers with Ample Marketing Budgets
Another less standard idea to take advantage of social media in the marketing of your property management business is to partner with influencers. There are many influencers that real estate investors trust when it comes to making decisions related to their investments. And you can benefit from this fact.
With influencer marketing, you need to identify someone in your field with strong social media authority and engagement. Instead of looking for an influencer who has millions of unengaged followers, it's a smarter move to search for someone with a smaller audience of highly engaged followers. In this way, you can lower the budget for your influencer marketing campaign - as these can cost thousands of dollars for a short video - while maximizing results. With micro influencers, you might even be able to pay on a commission basis instead of an upfront flat fee.
Once again, keep in mind that hiring influencers to promote your property management brand can get very expensive. But sometimes it's worth it as a mention and a tag by someone with so much influence in the industry can bring you dozens of new leads.
10. Offer Free Consultations: Best for Property Managers with Free Time
Finally, if you're looking for creative ideas to give your property management business a boost, you can provide investment and legal advice to prospective customers for free. There are plenty of things with which property investors and Airbnb hosts struggle, such as finding profitable markets, analyzing ROI potential, understanding local short term rental regulations, and making sense of taxes. You can offer 15-minute online consultations on any of these topics as a proven way to generate new leads.
These consultations play a dual role. First of all, they show that you really care about the success of rental property investors, even before they officially become your clients. Second, you can use them to highlight your expertise on all matters of concern to real estate investors.
In terms of marketing the actual consultations, you can set up an online sign-up form on your website that you can also share on social media or by email.
Bottom Line
With the best creative marketing ideas for property management businesses, you can give your company the push that it needs to grow. While some of these are better suited for the needs of established property managers, others are specifically designed for those who are taking their first steps in the property management industry.
